


Observations from the window seat

by OhHolyHell



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Getting Back Together, I mean it's kind of a, Love is Love kids, M/M, Warning for pretentious writing style, and second person pov, coffee shop AU, i don't think this is canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 21:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhHolyHell/pseuds/OhHolyHell
Summary: There is a boy in this cafe. The boy is beautiful, tragically soWith glowing skin and dark hair and he'scut his hair.He'schanged.Elio and Oliver return to each other.





	Observations from the window seat

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not going to preface this with anything but the fact that i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it and rewatching the film til i cried so hard i nearly dehydrated (what a lame-o i am), so without further ado, please enjoy!

There is a boy in this cafe.

He is dark haired with glowing skin. 

He is drinking juice, not coffee like you, you tired shell of a man.

He's cut his hair. Longer on the top, the sides are shaved. It's not that it doesn't suit him but that he's _changed_.

The boy is beautiful, tragically so. Greek poets would have had a field day. 

He's got his headphones on, so maybe he won't hear your longing sigh as your heart splits like ripe fruit. You hope that he is rewriting that blasted piece one more time. Maybe in this lifetime he redoes it in a way that asks you to stay once more. Maybe this time you will. No- this time you _will_

_Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother_

He is your beloved, he is not your brother. 

You wish there was a way for writing music to ask him to forgive you, but your sins can only be washed off in the waters of a pool somewhere in northern Italy and you will never be touched by those particular rays of sun again. You still won't touch fruit with a pit in it. He will never touch you.

The sun ricochets off of a shining six-pointed star that swings wildly as he looses the chain from between his teeth. It hits you right in the chest. You'd think he aimed it at you if he wasn't such a gentle boy. Too kind to hurt you on purpose. Unlike you, you deserter, you coward, you-

He moves like a pianist, like a cat in the sun, like a ballet dancer, reaching for his drink, rolling the straw between finger and thumb, pinching it with his teeth. 

There's something tantalising about the way he uses his hollow bird-boned wrist to swipe liquid from his chin. You want to lick it off of him and have it taste like the apricot juice you drank his father's study before you passed with flying colours and he laughed at you and you fell deeper.

There's a pit in your stomach like a peach when you think that he was right, it's _sick_.

Sick how much you want him. 

Sick how sickly sweet you want to be to him.

&

You wish - suddenly, wildly, irresponsibly - that you had majored in English Lit, just so you would have a knowledge of Shakespeare almost as intimate as your knowledge of him, so you could wax lyrical about every shift of his bones under every inch of pink-gold, fuzzed peach skin, about every plane of his being that light glances off of. 

You think better of it. 

Not only would he _hate_ you for it, for talking about the body he folds into every morning after he soars through the night sky, but there would be no _him_ if you had never taken his father's class, never travelled to _somewhere_ in northern Italy, never gotten too fucking deep into this mess. 

&

Scalding your tongue on your coffee doesn't matter anymore. It is already burned from where it has touched him.

The boy in this coffee shop is different now, but his eyes are the same. 

The boy - oh god - the boy is looking at you. 

You start noticing new things about him. 

Like the fact that the powder blue button up is not his own.

Like how his mouth is opening in the way it does when he wants to be kissed. 

And then how his lips push forward and you can read them without trying because you know, because you have _burned_ the way they look when they say his name ( _your name_ ) into your mind. 

How the New York grey around you is bright, Italian, technicolour blue where it touches him. 

The boy- your boy- Elio- Oliver-

Elio takes down his headphones, sets down his juice, stands and stretches his shoulder blades. Sharp flat bones that must once have held wings. Perhaps they were there in another life, the one where you stayed from the beginning til the end and never left in the middle, not once.

You are high up in the window seat but he has grown (he wasn't even _grown_ when you touched him last) and his eyes are forward when they bare into yours. 

His jaw loosens again, lips parted in permission, ready to speak one more time, letting you know that he remembers.

&

'Pronto,' you say, because you are, you are ready, ready, ready to speak to him and touch him and- 

'I've missed you Elio.' He doesn't say it but you hear it, the echo of _Elio, Elio, Elio, ElioElioelioelioelioeli-_

'Oliver.' You cut him off. You are not aware of whether you're referring to him or yourself. Does it matter? He sags like a marionette whose puppeteer has abandoned him.

You must have been referring to him, then.

&

You have your left hand on the back of his neck. You don't know how it got there. If you let go he may fall. 

He mustn't fall for you again. 

He is reaching behind to touch it. He will feel no cold metal there, not unless it is him who gives it to you. 

There is an twitch in his eyebrow and his _damn_ mouth is open again. 

Your last observation is this: It is not a good idea to kiss Elio Perlman, not here, not ever, not unless you change your timelines, unless you become different people, or the same people in different lives.  1

The footnote reads as such: 1. You are going to fucking kiss him. 

&

You do. 

You kiss him like he is your saint and you are a blushing pilgrim, a holy palmer, and maybe you do remember more about Shakespeare than you thought. 

Or it could be Elio that knows it, that he is once more bleeding into you, with all the parts of him that you ripped out and returned settling back home. 

&

One more observation: The juice is peach.2

2\. He does not taste like peaches and apricots and summer and sex and sunlight. Those things will forever taste like Elio Perlman. You will taste them every day for the rest of your life. Beginning to end. You will not leave in the middle. Not once. He has, _finally_ , seized you. 

**Author's Note:**

> did ya like it? i hope you did! (and i secretly hope you'll leave me a kudos or comment so we can chat)
> 
> now let me tell you that although this is poor writing, i absolutely _had_ to share because i've been thinking about this film for like weeks and it's rare i have such a burst of inspiration. 
> 
>  
> 
> also, i took inspiration out of a few things, like the telephone scene in the book (i haven't even read it so thank you tumblr) and troye sivan's 'strawberries & cigarrettes' as well as obviously the pilgrim sonnet in romeo and juliet, so go check them out i guess? 
> 
> anyway, i've rambled on for far too long so thank you for reading and please share any thoughts you have below! later! x
> 
> drop by my [Tumblr?](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lets-ship-everything)


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